More than an experiment in Westside, Prilepin, and Periodization, this is my experiment in sports performance and endurance.

Monday, January 31, 2011

5/3/1: Cycle 2 Military Press Deload

All Notation: Weight x Reps x Sets

Lots of people on the Internet who discuss workout programs to death, or dwell a little long on forums to find out shit. Or jump from program to program to program until something works. I'll stick with a program or whatever it is I try, tweak it, write it down, take my chances. Sometimes, in that quest, I don't know when to back off. Or I need to see it coming sooner.

My program was working. I was hitting my numbers on time. I was getting stronger. I was even losing weight slow and steady. I was also sore a lot, my back was not recovering as quick, I was getting tight in the hips, my squat was starting to get slow, my left elbow was banged up. I was skipping aerobics workouts to get through the weight workouts, forgetting that my other career (military) requires me to be lean.

Warrior ethos would dictate that, since I was gaining, that I should soldier on, eat more, pop more supplements, get on pain pills, etc. Or to not mess with something that was working. And I wanted to keep going to see my grand experiment through. I decided to change, while the choice was mine to make. Lesson here is to not screw around too much with well designed programs, and that I should balance my stresses. I'm not a snowflake, the rules of overtraining will eventually apply.

So I dropped the leg presses and the deadlifts: do the math, that's a lot of extra tonnage gone. Adjusted the rowing more for reps than 5/3/1: throw in the bench presses, and that was a lot for my elbows to bear. I am sticking with the good mornings for a DL movement: I want to build a base for my first 400 squat and bigger DLs. I went through the Westside for Skinny Bastards III template and used it to make my template leaner and more effective.

I downloaded a really cool 5/3/1 spreadsheet at T-Nation: https://docs.google.com/...hNDA5&hl=en for the .xlsx version or https://docs.google.com/...2YzYw&hl=en for the .xls version. Looking at the 12 cycles, I could have my goals by year's end if I stick to it and stay healthy. So I started to look at the long haul a little closer.

I hate to abandon a cycle before it is finished but I thought a deload made the most sense, and I'll just restart Cycle 3. Today's workout was refreshingly easy.